


Clean Clock

by cissues



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Pre-Slash, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 18:43:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11042049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cissues/pseuds/cissues
Summary: '“So, you’re that guy, huh?” The man says, finally.  He has his back to the newly emptied and even more newly dirtied sink and Hermann’s gaze is fixated on the encrusted plates and wine-stained glassware.'Or, where Hermann is a hermit and also a clean freak with messy roommates.





	Clean Clock

**Author's Note:**

> Whoops haven't posted anything in a while.
> 
> I wrote this while I was avoiding doing homework, sitting at my kitchen table at 2 in the morning and watching my roommate dump his dirty dishes into the sink and then walk away. So you can say this is inspired by a true story.
> 
> I apologize if this fic is a little out of character. I edited it to be slightly more in character after re-watching Pacific Rim twice in a week but I'm afraid it's still a little ooc. At least it's better than it was before? (It was really bad before, trust me).
> 
> My tumblr is cacaesthesia.tumblr.com. Please send me an ask if you'd like! I'd love to talk about Pacific Rim or y'know, whatever!

It’s late.

Far too late for Hermann to be up and absolutely too late to be indulging late night cravings amidst a veritable storm of studying. He has class in four hours. Much, much too late.

He opens the kitchen cupboards and blearily surveys the collection of instant, microwavable meals that he never thought he would stoop low enough to eat. He searches for the least nauseating option among the wreckage and finds his fingers twitching to organize, categorize, clean. His brain is screaming for distraction from whatever the Hell he had been trying to write about. Gen Eds were of the Devil, he’s certain. He reaches for a packet of Oriental flavored ramen - surely a dated and racist name. Was there no discourse on this? No online petitions demanding the company to change the name? He would perhaps research this later - and turns to fetch a pot in which to cook it.

When he turns towards the sink, he realizes that, buried among the cataclysm of filthy, weeks-unwashed dishes is every single pot that belongs to this God-forsaken household. Hermann clutches his ramen packet to his chest and grinds his teeth - a horrible habit that he has had no time or energy to discourage.

Hermann has the unfortunate luck of living with a household of other students. The issue being that Hermann isn’t anything like the other students. He’s clean, he keeps to himself, he prefers a gin and tonic nightcap to hours of needless partying. He does not, under any circumstances, leave _every single dish in the dirty sink_.

He doesn’t even speak to his other roommates. He’s not sure he even knows all of their faces. He was told there were four others, but he’s forgotten all of their names besides the one who collects rent - Tendo Choi. He likes Tendo, for the most part, and he does not seem the type to refuse to _ever wash his dirty dishes_.

With a put-upon sigh and a sleep-adled mind that pulled him relentlessly away from anything remotely productive he could have been doing, Hermann rolls up the sleeves of his well-worn sleep shirt and goes to work.

For nearly an hour into the night, Hermann loses himself in the scrubbing, drying, and arranging of his shared kitchen. He’s sure that these moments of manic cleaning at ridiculous hours is perhaps the most involved he gets in household activities. His passive-aggressive cleaning can be done in peace and he is graced with silence and a lack of need to make small talk with relative strangers.

Or, at least, that’s what he had been hoping for. A little more than an hour after he began his tirade, a gentle clearing of the throat pulls him from his mindless work. He pauses mid-scrub of the counter to look for the source of the noise.

A small man, nearly his age but perhaps younger, stood in the doorway of the kitchen clutching what had to be another entire kitchen’s worth of dishware. He sheepishly shuffles forward, then back towards the door, then back towards the sink where he deposits his filth and stands in silence for the briefest of moments.

“So, you’re _that guy_ , huh?” The man says, finally. He has his back to the newly emptied and even more newly dirtied sink and Hermann’s gaze is fixated on the encrusted plates and wine-stained glassware.

He’s silent.

The man clears his throat again, a small smile playing on his face. “There’s rumors about you,” he says, as if this was a secret. It is not. Hermann is well aware and could not care less. “They say you’re eighty years old revisiting a doctorate that you abandoned when you got drafted for The War,” the man continues, finally turning towards the sink and _finally_ turning on the faucet. Hermann sighs an infinitesimal breath of relief and goes back to getting a years-old God-knows-what stain off of the linoleum countertop. “They also say that you’re a genius deaf mute with a skin condition that makes you vulnerable to the sun.”

“I have morning classes.” Hermann says, butting in at this genuinely obnoxious accusation. His roommates have seen him in class, he’s sure. Although, the more he thinks about it, he gets up much earlier than any of them and is well-past the Bachelor track that most of them are pursuing.

“The deaf mute speaks!” The man cheers and spins around, causing Hermann to jump. “An unbelievable feat! A miracle performed by none other than the Wunderkind, Newton Geiszler!”

Hermann pauses in his cleaning again to turn and look at the other man. Now that he isn’t completely distracted by a tower of potential future chores to be done by him at four in the morning he does notice that the man is rather familiar. After only a few more moments of putting a few obvious twos and twos together, Hermann realizes that this is, in fact, _Dr._ Newton Geiszler of the “second youngest to ever be admitted into MIT”, “fast-track Wunderkind”, “two PhDs and counting”. _Newton Geiszler_ , child-genius has been his roommate for the better part of three months and he hadn’t been made aware of this? Sure, he knew that a few of his other roommates were, perhaps, more _gifted_ than others attending this school, but he would have assumed that the college’s grant-making machine would have been graced with private quarters, perhaps a throne, likely a herald.

“Ah,” he says dumbly.

Newton _fucking_ Geiszler gives him an odd smile and points at himself. “That’d be me, Newt,” he clarified, as if Hermann was, indeed, deaf and mute. Hermann blinks himself out of what was likely a very unpretty slump and wipes his hands against his pajama pants. “I know,” he replies, eyebrows furrowing.

Newton’s eyebrows raise slowly upward on his forehead before he turns once more towards the sink where, Hermann notices, the water had been running this whole time. He also notices that Newton is wearing a pair of inappropriately short and tight bottoms that are loudly shouting “JUICY” at him from the other man’s… _glutes_. They are bright pink. And so is Hermann now, apparently.

He turns back towards the counter and realizes that the stain he had been scrubbing was long gone and he now had no reason to stay in the kitchen… except…

The blue packet of ramen stares accusingly at him from where it lay, half forgotten on the newly-decrusted stovetop.

He shouldn’t.

He has class in two and a half hours.

He can’t.

Newton’s ass is swaying back and forth as he hums some obnoxious tune and Hermann swears on the Bible that it hypnotized him into retrieving a pot from the newly-organized pot cupboard and peeling the chunk of dried noodles from its wrapper. He realizes, too late, that the only source of water is currently monopolized by hot-pink bootyshorts. He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and clears his throat (and pulls his eyes away from JUICY).

It takes a moment before Newton pauses and peers over his shoulder - a decidedly Bad Time for Hermann as it shows off a new curvature he hadn’t previously been aware existed. It is the Worst Time because Hermann is supposed to _hate_ these people, despise them for living so utterly disgustingly and forcing him to clean after their squalor. He’s supposed to stay holed up in his room until he is dragged out and onto a stage to receive his diploma and a stole and whatever various collections of tassels he has managed to achieve. He is not - and I repeat Not - supposed to stare at anyone’s JUICY behind and trace tired, unfocused eyes along the gentle lines of another body. This is a distraction and it needs to be eradicated.

“Water.”

Newton smirks like he knows something Hermann doesn’t - and he assumedly knows much - and slips only slightly away from the still-running faucet. Hermann is distinctly aware that the only way to place the pot under the water is to press himself against Newton and stand there until the pot fills. He is also distinctly aware that Newton is doing this on purpose.

He deigns to stretch his arm out as far as possible to dribble the running water onto his noodles. This still allows for their arms to brush and Newton is grinning in a delight that Hermann is a little scared of for a reason he can’t quite understand. He avoids eye contact by staring at a framed illustration of the inner-workings of a car engine inexplicably hung above the faucet. He can feel Newton’s gaze on him and he can _feel_ how it moves up and down painstakingly slowly. He does _not_ think about JUICY.

“I know who you are.” Newton says suddenly. Hermann jumps, gaze moving to watch Newton as he places his pot on a burner, turning on the electric coil via a chipping dial. Newton shuts the water off, dishes only half-done. The front of his shirt is a little damp from the water, and he has soap suds sticking to his fingers and palms and Hermann watches the other man as if he’s waiting for something. Maybe he is. He is not used to this level of social interaction and he has to admit that he’s forgotten much of the mechanics of it.

“Gottlieb, right? We’re in the same biochem class. I can’t believe we’ve been living under each other’s noses this whole time! You’re brilliant, dude! Completely fucking brilliant! I’ve been admiring your brain from afar for, like, three semesters,” Newton is suddenly close and Hermann’s fingers curl into a fist as a knee jerk reaction to the proximity. He’s not sure when was the last time he had been touched and the potentiality is slightly nauseating. It takes him a moment to realize that what had just come out of Newton’s mouth had been a string of unsolicited compliments. Newton has noticed him and Newton ‘admires his brain’, apparently. He is suddenly hyper-aware of how long the silence has stretched on but he’s not exactly sure what is happening.

He settles on, “what?”

Newton laughs, shuffling ever closer. “You,” he pokes Hermann’s chest, “are fucking hot.”

Hermann is too taken aback by this to notice the red flush on Newton’s face or the tremor of nerves in his finger. “If I had known that you were the mystery roomie I would have been more invested in dragging you into the house parties,” he glanced around the now spotless kitchen, “and had I known you were this much of a clean freak I would have left so many more dishes out.”

Hermann frowns, very suddenly and violently put off.

“It was you?” He growls. There’s a hiss as the water in his pot boils over onto the red-hot burner. Newton’s grin does not falter, but he shrugs nonchalantly and eyes Hermann with a complicated look. “Oh, yeah. I hate doing dishes, and if I keep them out long enough they magically clean themselves.”

Hermann recalls late, insomniatic nights like this one that consisted of dutiful tidying up for what might as well have been imaginary roommates. He recalls disdain over his hard work upended and ruined within a 24 hour period.

“You do this every week?” He asks, his voice starting to quiver.

Newton shrugs again and busies himself by looking through the fridge. “I do it whenever I have dishes, dude. I have too much work to do to worry about shit like _dishes_ and _cleaning_.”

Hermann cannot see the other man’s face, and JUICY is staring at him mockingly.

“And you never thought to -- you didn’t think for a _moment_ \--”

“Hermann, if you understood the kind of work I did you wouldn’t be blaming me for this, honestly. I don’t have the _time_ , my guy.”

The pot on the stove is making satisfying bubbling noises but Hermann isn’t hungry anymore. If anything, the boiling pot serves as an excellent visual metaphor for how he feels right now.

“I have better things to do than clean up after--”

“I never asked you to, dude. Just a happy accident, I guess. You try being MIT’s second youngest prodigy and worry about that shit! Makes sense to leave it the people with less important things on their plate, y’know?”

That was it. The final straw.

“You… you _repugnant_ little man! I can’t believe I have been a _handmaid_ to a bratty, self-obsessed _child_ for three months!” He says with a wild, sleep-deprived fervor that perhaps was a touch more venomous than he had intended. Newton, infuriatingly, has not turned around.

Hermann slams the stove dial off and practically throws his overflowing pot into the freshly dirtied sink. “A _child_ ,” he continues, “who has schmoozed his way into scholarship after scholarship on _ridiculous_ and _unproven_ theory! Theory, mind you, on _alien life_. I’ve been an unpaid _au pair_ to a spoiled, teenaged _cryptozoologist_ who might as well have been raised in a _barn_!”

Newton finally glances back at Hermann, a hint of an amused smile peeking out over his shoulder.

“I’m twenty, actually. So, technically not a teenager. Although I’m flattered that you’ve paid this much attention.”

“You insolent, egotistical, idiotic--”

“I’ll do my dishes if you go out with me.”

Hermann pauses, the anger quickly subsiding into shock.

“Excuse me?” He asks after a moment.

Newton shrugs, closes the fridge door and walks over to the sink, flicking on the faucet and grabbing a dish from the last half of his pile. “I mean, honestly I’ll probably do them anyway. If I had known it was you cleaning up after me and not, like, Raleigh or Tendo, I probably would have started doing them way long ago. I thought it was their way of paying me back for always paying for the booze and getting Raleigh the answer sheets for Calculus. If I’d known you were doing it I wouldn’t have left them.” He flashes a smile over his shoulder. “But it was fun riling you up. We should do this again. Maybe over coffee?” He doesn’t turn all the way around again, and sans red rage, Hermann notices a tense nervousness in his shoulders.

“Well,” Hermann starts, suddenly sheepish and very, very tired. He’s never been asked out before, and certainly never been called “hot” to his face, so it was a bit hard to take any of this seriously, but JUICY was calling to him once more in a way that was a bit hard to ignore. If all he had to do was get coffee with Newton Geiszler in order to maintain a tidy equilibrium in his kitchen, then perhaps it was worth it.

“I suppose I have some harsh words to make up for,” he sounds exactly as confident as he feels, but the small smile that he could see on the portion of Newton’s face that was visible kept him going. “I believe buying you a coffee would be a good place to start.”

Newton twists again, smiling ever brighter, and nods. “I believe it would,” he concedes before throwing himself manically into cleaning the rest of the dishes, including Hermann’s soggy, overcooked ramen pot.

There is no time for sleep before his class at 8:30 and so he turns and he exits the kitchen, holing himself back into his room, although this time he feels as if he may have more of a reason to emerge from time to time.


End file.
